Peter and I celebrated birthdays in November (mine the 23rd, his the 24th!). My gift to him was a custom-stitched house scene by the super talented Melissa of Little Pink House.

He loved it. And so do I.

Compare to a photo:

She even stitched in Lucy peeking out the door!!

Peter and I are fans of coffee… Peter even has a dream of opening a coffee shop someday. So when I heard about the Coffee Fair going on this weekend (Nov. 7-8, 2009) I knew we must check it out!

The Fair was held at the World Forestry Center, which I didn’t even know existed. It is nearby the Children’s Museum,  Portland Zoo, Japanese Gardens and many of the other attractions in Washington City Park.

The Coffee Fair this weekend featured lots of coffee vendors giving samples and discussing their product and techniques. It was interesting and I got some yummy samples, but the most interesting part of the Coffee experience was the part that will be sticking around; Coffee: The World In Your Cup is a special exhibit that will be open until January 10, 2010. It is a self-guided walk through the life of a coffee bean. They even have live coffee plants. I thought I knew about coffee but I didn’t realize how much human labor goes into the process. It was fascinating!

I also enjoyed the variety designs of burlap coffee sacks and consumer-marketed bags of ground coffee.

A bonus of attending the fair or the exhibit is that your admission gets you into the World Forestry Center permanent exhibits as well. I will admit while I love trees, this is probably the last museum I would have visited of my own choosing. Forestry sounds mechanical and boring. But the museum was actually really cool. They have a lot of interactive exhibits. Peter found a wood instrument to bang on:

And there was a nearly 700-year-old tree.

Impressive! Although it made me wonder how old the big tree was I saw in North Bend, Washington this past summer:

Anyway… The World Forestry Center is worth a visit for sure. It’s kid friendly but there is plenty for adults to enjoy too.

Admission is $8/adults, $5/kids. Which I think is kinda steep for a museum so I would recommend going when a special exhibit is happening that excites you so you can get the 2-for-1 deal.  They are having mini-tasting “Coffee Weekends” in the future as well. And if Coffee is not your thing, the next Fair might be… It’s the ChocolateFest that will be open January 29-31, 2010. The accompanying special exhibit, A Chocolate Story, will be around from January 30-April 25, 2010.

Note: Some of the links in this post are time-sensitive and may not be correct in the future.

I went out to the front yard at dusk last night and clipped some of the mums. You can’t even tell any are missing, there are so many. I will keep replenishing these vases as long as I can.

Cheery flowers now in the kitchen:

And the office:

And so it begins…

I can’t take a screenshot of it all at once but trust me, it says 10 days of rain forecasts coming up. Oh boy…

But I’m getting sunshine in my life by three close friends moving to Portland in the next couple of weeks. One of them will be living with us. It’s been a long time since Peter and I had a roommate besides each other!

So, I’ll make this as short as I can. It’s not my style to slam a company or person, especially in a public forum. But I don’t know that there is anything else I could do, and I want to put this out there for any would-be Googlers as a warning.

Our situation with our temporary rental space is finally over (yes, we did move out over 2 months ago and were still dealing with it). If you are considering it, I would recommend against renting with the company When In Portland and owner(?) Michelle Rosa for your temporary Portland dwelling. In short: overpriced, misleadingly advertised, unclean, and worst of all slow/no communication to get stuff taken care of. Oh and we never met the landlord, ever.

Like I said I am torn to write this but when you are searching for a place to stay in a remote place sometimes all you have is Google. If any would-be renters have any questions, contact me.